Introduction
“We’re the best.”
That was the response from a CMO when I asked him on a discovery call for website copy why 250 companies bought from his.
His answer told me two things:
First, he didn’t know his current company’s positioning.
Second, he didn’t know what positioning was.
I realize this is simply one anecdote. However, this was one of many times I experienced this as a copywriter turned brand strategist.
The difference here was that this individual had driven tens of millions of dollars in revenue as head of marketing at multiple organizations. Put simply, he knows what he’s doing.
And yet, he couldn’t answer a simple question about his business.
If “we’re the best,” isn’t positioning, let’s talk about what is.
A few disclaimers
I do not claim to be a positioning expert, just like I don’t claim to be a copywriting or marketing expert. There is no such thing.
Be wary of anyone who claims this title in the marketing space or makes guarantees for their work.
One of the biggest issues in B2B marketing is resting on one's laurels and “15 years of experience.”
As if Tiktok existed four years ago. As if algorithms don’t change daily. As if every company or client and their customers aren’t completely different.
In short, as if marketing isn’t 99% contextual.
The only guarantee and unchanging aspect – and one which B2B SaaS never had to grasp until now – is that the customers call the shots.
Please also note, "unprecedented times" or not, you cannot position or message your way into making people buy your product. Contrary to what many marketing influencers on the Internet tell you, you cannot pain point your way into B2B customers’ lives.
People counter that argument with an example of toothpaste and the previously non-existent demand for that. I explain why that example is both thoughtless and irrelevant in this piece.
But make no mistake, if you do not have something people want to buy, no positioning, POV, messaging can save you.
I have purposely left any screenshots anonymous. While one can easily find out who the authors are, I want readers to recognize general thought patterns.
The individuals in them are merely representative of common beliefs present in the current B2B marketing landscape and their identity is immaterial. If these people weren’t saying these things, someone else would be.
Lastly, for purposes of brevity, I will be referring to B2B SaaS simply as "B2B."
Now, let's get into it.
What is positioning?
B2B marketers do a stunning job of simplifying things that are actually complex, and complicating things that are actually quite simple – including positioning.
Positioning is why someone hands you money instead of another company or instead of keeping it in their wallet.
It’s how you differentiate while still stating the truth of what you do. In other words, it's how you stand out without selling out.
That’s it.
So, how do you choose your positioning?
You don’t.
Effective positioning is a perfect fit between:
1. The solution(s) you provide
2. Profitability
3. Scalability
Two out of three is doable for many companies. Three out of three is rare.
This makes sense since most software companies are a solution in search of a problem.
Therefore, the idea that companies have a choice with their positioning is a myth.
Companies and founders, if you're "struggling" to figure out yours (though I'm not sure why you’d start an entire company without knowing it), it’s because you think you have options.
You don’t.
B2B thinking they have options with any of their marketing, for that matter, is a myth as well.
Let’s be very clear about something: your customers have options.
You, naive B2B companies who think “secret VC memos” contain something more than a study guide for freshman year business major finals, do not. (1)
Oftentimes, SaaS companies trying to figure out their positioning makes them realize they don’t actually have anything to sell.
Instead of doing the work to find out if they do (i.e., instead of answering fundamental questions about their business), three things happen:
Scenario 1. They go to some agency or a (former) freelance copywriter like myself for a strategic narrative or “brand story.”
Because that’s what a LinkedIn B2B marketing influencer – who has no idea what the company even sells or who their target audiences are – said they needed.
Scenario 2. They default to “pick an enemy” positioning or "Uber of X" positioning. In short, they try to establish their positioning in relation to something else).
Because that’s what a LinkedIn B2B marketing influencer – who has no idea what they even sell or who their targets audiences are – said they needed.
These tactics aren't positioning. They may work for a campaign, but on the whole, they're simpleminded indolence.
Scenario 3. They try to create a category. The key word being "try." I outline the issues with most category creation attempts below.
None of these scenarios end well, because they all stem from B2B marketers’ arrogant and false belief that they know better than their ideal customers when it comes to their marketing, including their positioning.
Two questions your positioning must answer
At some point, with your positioning, you must answer two questions.
Question 1. Why should our ICP buy from us and not a similar company down the street or an alternative combination of companies?
Question 2. Why should our ICP buy from us instead of continuing to do what they’re currently doing?
Differentiation is both an objective of and prerequisite for effective positioning – differentiation from both the direct competition (other companies) and indirect competition (the status quo).
While effective positioning must be a perfect fit between the three things mentioned above – solution, profitability, and scalability – it is made up of three components which I outline below.
As mentioned, contrary to what the CMO in the anecdote above believed, being “the best” is not positioning. You’re not aiming for the best with your positioning.
Effective positioning is about fit.
It’s about being the best for a certain group of people who have a particular problem to solve, then clearly communicating that to them in a way that leads to them making a purchase.
I will be referring to this group as your ideal customer profile, or ICP, for short. (2)
The three components of effective positioning
There is no bulletproof positioning or messaging framework like some people and agencies claim to have. There are helpful starting points, but that’s it.
There are also B2B marketers who claim that there is no framework. But the same people saying:
"[T]here’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building the perfect messaging strategy."
Will then turn around just two paragraphs later and say:
"This guide will help you understand how to set yourself apart from the competition and deploy a messaging strategy that resonates."
What I outline isn’t a strategy. It’s an approach to develop the bare bones non-negotiables required to then create a strategy.
It is simply an attempt to teach you how to find answers for yourself from the perspective of a former copywriter, B2B business owner who is a paying customer of over a dozen SaaS companies, and common sense. (See Appendix B for how I got into positioning.)
Keep in mind, this approach will not work for every business. This will work for very few SaaS companies, because most B2B companies shouldn't exist.
This approach is for companies that have proven that they solve a problem that:
a) People are interested in solving
b) People are willing to pay money to solve
Read: not early-stage startups.
“But Victoria, a good marketer knows how to sell snow to an Inuit!”
False, a good marketer only plays where they know where they can win. They don’t waste their time on companies with a 90%+ fail rate.
(Though according to a “marketing expert” on Twitter, many startups fail from a lack of good positioning, so maybe I should open my doors to them.)
If the answers to the questions below are not confirmed by ICP research, you are basing your entire marketing strategy on assumption.
When your opinion-driven marketing fails, and it inevitably will, now you know why.
Effective positioning takes work and time. It must be bulletproof – or as close to – from all angles.
The majority of B2B company’s positioning could not withstand an attack from the side, from the back, or even from the front.
Nor do B2B companies have the skill to defend themselves because they seldom had to (there was always more money).
Below are what I consider the three components of positioning.
These will then become the foundation on which you build your entire marketing strategy, strategic narrative or brand story, brand voice, and copy.
Attempt to create those things before answering the questions below, or some variation, and you will not succeed.
Component 1: "The facts"
What are we doing here?
What does our product/service do?
How does it work?
Who is our product/service a good fit for?
Who isn't our product/service a good fit for?
Why would someone buy your product or service over one that's very similar to yours?
If you cannot tell me what your product or service does without using adjectives, you do not have a product or service worth buying.
Question 4 (who isn't your product/service a good fit for?) is key.
Yet, it's the one that few companies will actually answer.
By not answering this question, you are positioning yourself as a commodity, which is impossible. You can read more about this topic in this piece.
If you can’t come up with a tangible answer to Question 5 (why would someone buy your product or service over one that's very similar to yours?), it means you shouldn’t be in business or you need to pursue a brand play. (See Appendix A)
A note on strategic narratives
Strategic narratives, as well as brand stories, have their place. But I won’t be discussing them, for two reasons.
First, they’re too often discussed without understanding the gravity of nailing the three components I outline below. They are written first when they should be written last.
They are typically, not always, nothing more than the result of pillow fight strategy meetings, the piles of feathers from which former copywriters like myself are tired of receiving and expected to be able to do something with.
Companies whose strategic narratives or brand stories that do drive meaningful revenue, have nailed the foundation outlined below.
Second, strategic narratives are too often pursued in place of B2B companies answering critical questions about their business and getting to know their potential customers.
No potential customer has ever thought to themselves, “I would have gone with company X, but they didn’t have a strategic narrative that resonated with me.”
Such potential customers most likely didn’t turn into buyers for one or more of the following reasons:
The company didn't articulate what they do and how it was relevant to the website visitor, ad viewer, etc.
The company didn't provide pricing on their website
The company didn't make it easy to buy (lead shuffled between ignorant SDRs, ignored contact page inquiries, forced a demo when the lead was ready to purchase, etc.)
This section is not meant as a diss to anyone who specializes in strategic narratives or brand stories.
Though I will say, there should be a lot less of you given how few companies have the foundation established required to write effective ones.
Companies: once you know your positioning, your strategic narrative or brand story practically writes itself. (3)
Strategic narratives and brand stories are the home movie theater of marketing tactics. Figure out your plumbing and electricity (i.e., your positioning) before even considering investing in those things.
If you think your company’s issue is that it’s lacking a strategic narrative, but you have not answered the questions above or your team cannot agree on the answers, a lack of strategic narrative or brand story is not your issue.
Back to the second component of effective positioning.
Component 2: Point-of-view (POV)
What do we have to say about what we’re doing here?
What is our unique perspective as it relates to the solution we provide or what is our non-unique perspective on the world that we express in a unique way?
When I’m brought on to establish positioning, a POV is actually what my clients are paying me to establish, whether they realize it or not.
I uncover their unique perspective. I mine for the gold and then guide them on how to turn it into jewelry they can sell. But the gold must be there; I’m a consultant, not an alchemist.
POV is the crucial yet too often missing piece of effective positioning. It’s considered a nice-to-have when it should be considered a non-negotiable.
Your POV becomes the foundation for your messaging, as well as your brand voice, and then eventually your copy.
It must be compelling and it must be related to a problem that your ICP (not your total addressable market, or TAM) is experiencing.
What makes a compelling POV?
"Compelling (adj): evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way."
For a POV to be compelling, it must be two things:
Unique. This is how you differentiate from the two types of competition – other companies, as well as the status quo (inaction is always a competitor).
Relevant to your ideal customer. There are plenty of unique viewpoints out there, but it needs to align with what matters most to your ICP.
Keep in mind, like your overall positioning, you do not choose what’s relevant to your ideal customer.
POV is the piece of positioning that most companies fail at, for the following reasons:
First, they don’t get that their POV doesn’t have to be earth shattering. It probably won’t be. Few software companies are doing anything remotely profound.
So, they either:
Reject the one viable compelling POV they've come up with that gives them a shot at standing out with their ICP
Go way too broad and think their audience cares about “why” they started a software company
Genuinely have nothing unique to say about the problem they solve (in which case, they better hope they’re the only one solving this problem)
All of them have watched too many TED talks, read too many Simon Sinek LinkedIn posts, or watched too many Steve Jobs biopics, and believe their company is simply entitled to not just exist, but succeed as well.
Companies: many of you are trying to play too big with your positioning and messaging. Do not underestimate the power of playing small.
You’re trying (and failing) to shoot for Apple when you’re genuinely better off getting inspiration from Craigslist.
As for the majority of B2B companies that do try to establish a compelling POV, they fail. Because doing so requires disqualifying part of their target audience.
The two questions above – what is our unique perspective as it relates to the solution we provide? / what is our non-unique perspective on the world that we express in a unique way? – are pretty open-ended.
Here’s a more specific one:
“What do we have to say about [corporate finance, sound design, B2B research, CRMs, insert solution/industry] that no one else has said yet?”
In my experience, the answer to this is found where people don’t think to look or where they’re not willing to, usually both.
Now, I’m usually against studying the competition beyond a certain point. Because if your eyes are on the competition, they’re not on your customer.
But this is one time where I do.
I have general steps I take each time but every client is different. One of the things I do is study the industry and competitive landscape. Not just the competition, but the entire industry.
I do this for a few reasons.
First and foremost, to learn it. The jargon, the current sentiments, the “beat on the street” as my former military friend calls it.
My clients work in a variety of industries. I make my ignorance my greatest strength by leaving no stone unturned with my research and seeing things that “experts” overlook because they think they’ve mastered a topic.
Next, because you don’t know who you’re up against. Who you think your direct competition is to you, might be different from who a potential customer is also considering. Many businesses have similar issues but they also have unique ones.
Marketers: you must understand that business owners aren’t always interested in a least expensive solution to a problem, particularly in the SMB space. Cheap gets expensive – in life, marketing, and software.
Products that cost less money will typically cost time or effort somewhere else. Those things are equally, if not more valuable than money to a business owner. (4)
Businesses are willing to go to great lengths for a solution that is a fit for their business, which may be a solution you haven't considered.
Similarly, just because something is a problem, doesn’t mean people are interested in paying money to solve it.
There are problems that breed apathy instead of frustration. And there are many human problems – such as hiring quality talent, making sure employees show up on time (or at all) – that no technology will ever be able to solve for, particularly in the SMB space. (5)
Never underestimate businesses’ willingness to duct tape together a solution with a combination of spreadsheets, manual processes, and SaaS tools. Switching to a “cheaper” platform costs time and could make them risk looking bad in front of their customers, or both.
So be sure to investigate how your ideal customers are addressing the problems today that your product aims to solve.
Third, and most importantly, POV, like positioning, is about fit. I study the competition to find my client’s POV by process of elimination or to test out the current one my client has to make sure another company doesn’t already have something similar.
Fintech client example
For a recent fintech client, I found their POV in an off-the-cuff comment their CEO made on a podcast.
Why did I choose it? Because it demonstrated how they thought about the problem they were solving in a unique way.
They were in a saturated market and their competitors were focused on features. There was only one feature at the time that they had that their competitors didn’t, but it was only a matter of time before someone else added it.
So I refused to let them lean on that for their POV. Doing so would have been lazy, and it would also mean engaging in a never ending feature war.
In other words, they had to pursue what I call a brand play. (A brand play is when when you lean on your POV for differentiation instead of what you do.)
The CEO, who was also a co-founder, made an insanely simple, yet poignant comment about why they started the company and how they thought about corporate finance on a broader scale that encapsulated why they were different.
And it was this viewpoint that would take them farther than leaning on any kitschy cashback features from their corporate card would.
While all their competitors were too busy attacking banks for being too stodgy, my client was going to be acknowledging that they were very necessary.
They’re in financial services, they needed banks. Banks were their partner, not punching bags, as I put it.
Here's a mock headline I came up with to highlight this POV:
“Picking up where banking left off.”
Conversely, one of their competitors was using “[b]usiness banking as it should be,” as if they weren’t backed by the big, bad, boring banks they claim to be against (or ones that didn’t know how to stay in business).
My client provided services which banks didn’t and never would, and vice versa. It wasn’t about trying to replace banks. They can’t.
It was about showing where my client fit into the overall financial ecosystem and tech stack of a company.
So while their competitors were going for a petulant child POV, my client would differentiate by establishing a mature, astute one that would then guide their brand voice, messaging, and eventually their copy.
As for their positioning, (i.e., their messaging that articulated “the facts” in an engaging way and aligned with their POV), they actually already had it. But they didn’t want to use it.
They wanted positioning that was new and earth shattering. It wasn't necessary, nor was it possible. They were dealing with one of the oldest industries in the world.
(Fintech companies, stop acting like you’re revolutionizing things that you’re not. Until money is easy to make, what you’re doing isn’t special. And that’s okay. Customers don’t need it to be.)
So we kept some of their messaging, got clear on "the facts," and established their POV.
Sound design client example
I had a positioning, brand voice, and website copy project for a creative audio studio last year.
Having no previous knowledge of sound design, this was one of my most challenging projects to date.
In order to write the website copy (i.e., speak intelligently on behalf of my client), I had to "make myself a local," as I call it.
I broke down what went into writing just 500 words in this piece, but one of the things I did was 70+ pages of other sound design websites to see how and where my client could fit in as well as stand out.
There are two things I want to call out here from studying the competition.
The first was around positioning being about fit.
My client was insanely talented and had worked with some big brands, but not as many as some other larger audio design agencies.
That wasn’t a problem because my client wasn’t trying to be like the big audio branding agencies in LA and NYC. They can’t compete with them, nor do they want to.
But that doesn’t mean that a potential creative director isn’t deciding between Antfood, a large audio branding agency in NYC, and my client.
The question I was attempting to answer by reading 70+ pages of sonic branding agency website copy wasn't: "what does my client do better than the competition?"
Instead, it was: "what does my client do differently than the competition that their ICP cares about?"
In this case, that meant leaning into the smallness, the nimbleness. Big audio agencies do amazing work but they can also be super annoying to work with. They’re slow. And they’re expensive. Sometimes that bigness is required, but sometimes it’s not.
My client is just as good. And smaller means less overhead and they can move faster.
The second thing I want to call out about studying the competition is around POV being about fit.
The window where my client could stand out without selling out was incredibly narrow.
Nearly every other audio branding agency said two things on their website: some riff on “your brand needs to be audible to stand out” and some riff on “it’s a loud world” so your brand needs to “cut through the noise.”
The only thing I knew was that there would be absolutely no use of that last phrase on the website. Other than that, I had no idea how I was going to stand apart from what seemed like an impossible to argue with concept.
Except it wasn’t.
My search for a compelling POV led me to studying how the brain processes sound. As it turns out, both of those concepts – brands needing to be audible to stand out and the world being loud – were actually false.
Sound is the only sense out of the five that doesn’t require you to pay attention in order for the brain to process it.
Likewise, you don’t have the same type of control over what causes your eardrums to vibrate as you have in controlling in what your eyes see, what your tongue tastes, or what clothing touches your skin.
In other words, it’s not that the world is loud, it’s that you can't avoid hearing things.
You can put on sunglasses if it’s too bright, or not wear an itchy wool sweater, or not eat cilantro if it tastes like metal to you.
But if you’re walking down the street, you can’t help but hear a jack hammer, or a car alarm, or the sound of footsteps. And whether you want it to or not, your brain is using bandwidth to process those noises.
Sound is also the most impactful when it comes to storytelling. Even though your brain processes visuals (or light) first, it’s sound that etches into your brain more deeply.
That’s why movie theme songs are so powerful and why you can remember lyrics decades after the last time you actually heard the song.
Which means it doesn’t matter if your brand is audible, if it’s not the right sound.
It might not seem like much, but it’s that small tweak that catches the attention of my client’s ICP.
We didn’t want a ton of leads. We wanted a steady stream of leads that are a perfect fit because we were so insanely clear about what we do anytime we talk about ourselves.
Too much business would break this client’s business, just like it would break most people’s whether they have the business acumen to realize it or not.
These are the nuances and details you must pay attention to if you want to stand out.
Whether you like it or not, the details and the seemingly mundane is the only place you can win in both a saturated or “blue ocean” market.
To quote a section from another piece where I discuss the differences between B2B and B2C marketing:
Brands are made in the small moments. And this is what most B2B marketers don’t understand.
Likewise, it’s the small moments that make effective copy.
Loud headlines can be effective, but unless your product or service has the same emotional impact as Apple or Nike, your loud headline will either fall on deaf ears – or blow out an eardrum.
Which means B2B companies need to win in the details, because it’s the details that shows you how well you know someone.
It’s the details that a target audience connects to. The thoughtful gift, the “aw, you shouldn’t have,” moments that build the trust that (hopefully) results in a purchase.
Adjusting the direction a plane takes off by just a few degrees can change in what city it lands.
Likewise, small tweaks to your POV will have wide sweeping benefits (or drawbacks) that extend to your messaging and then to your copy. It seems small internally, but when you go to express it, you’ll be clearly differentiated.
B2B marketers think they’re above rolling up their sleeves to do the often messy work of getting to know their customers or uncovering a compelling POV. They’re more concerned with coming up with ideas for their own LinkedIn posts than finding out what resonates with their customers or clients’ customers.
New B2B copywriters and anyone who wants to get into B2B marketing: I cannot stress to you how low the bar is to succeed so long as you keep your objective to get as close to your company or client’s ICP as possible.
Component 3: Messaging
How are we going to talk about what we’re doing here?
How are we going to express “the facts” and our POV in a way that resonates with our customers and target audience? This includes: · Sentiments/philosophies · Phrases · Adjectives
Are there multiple personas? If so, what differences do we need to be mindful of when addressing them?
What language and phrasing are we going to stay away from because: · It’s inconsistent with our POV or doesn’t support it · It’s already being used by a competitor · Our customers don’t speak like that
Do we have any proprietary phrases we want to coin?
Number three is crucial. Just like very few companies are willing to disqualify, too few marketing or branding teams realize the importance of establishing what messaging you will never use.
They’ll start off strong with clear messaging that’s in line with “the facts” and their POV (if they have one, they usually don’t), then slowly but surely, their messaging starts looking and sounding like everyone else’s.
It’s important to establish hard boundaries on ideas and philosophies, not just specific phrases, to train copywriters to think critically and to shorten feedback loops. Otherwise, you’ll have to spell out every single combination of words that they shouldn’t use.
Below are messaging restraints from the brand voice guide for the fintech client mentioned above. (The company name has been removed for my benefit, not theirs. Keeping my clients anonymous makes it harder for them to fire me if I say something they don’t like.)
Next to each one was an example of messaging my client needed to stay away to uphold the integrity of their positioning and brand voice from pulled from a competitor, below are the messaging topics followed by why the client was to stay away from them:
Saviorism | Gaslighting | Throwing Rocks* at the Old Way or Mentioning the Future |
No guilt trips or trying to push gratitude with our products.
We’re not here for a pat on the back. We’re here to [client’s POV and mission] for [client’s target audience]. Obviously, thousands of hours and millions of lines of code have gone into their product. That’s what it takes to build a software product. What does that have to do with anything? “Best-in-class” falls under the next section. That phrase will never be seen anywhere in [client’s] marketing because no customer speaks like that and the phrase itself is subjective, and therefore, meaningless.
“Seconds to close” falls under the Mocking the Complexity of corporate finance section (not shown) below. “A new kind of power” also falls under Dramatic and Inaccurate section (not shown) below. | Number of customers, awards, etc. is not a value add. It’s gaslighting. It doesn’t matter how many customers a company has – is [client] the right fit for the person reading it? That’s what you must answer. Not “how many people use our product?”
And the answer to that question might be no. [Client name] isn’t a fit for every single company. And that’s fine.
What isn’t fine is acting like you are because this results in weak leads and wasted resources. | You cannot step into the future, you’re just moving forward into another present.
Revolutionary would be valid if they explained what it was revolutionizing, but it doesn’t. So it’s just buzzword-y and dramatic. Subheadline is throwing rocks at the “old way,” which isn’t old if people are still doing it. We don’t criticize what people are doing. That’s easy, lazy copywriting. We just show them a better way.
Ideas can be ahead of their time. Software, or tangible things, cannot be ahead of their time if they’re here.
|
Phrasing, Words, and Styling to Avoid | Other Hard No's |
It’s no secret that…
|
|
That’s just a portion of the boundaries from the guide. (For anyone who thinks that’s too many or that any of the above is gratuitous, I’d love to see the results from your messaging.)
For the anti-corporate jargon crowd, you do not combat corporate jargon with simplicity. You combat corporate jargon with specificity and legitimization.
Dumbed down, too simple of messaging equals dumb copy equals customers. And dumb customers are bad customers. And bad customers will cost you.
That’s how many SaaS companies slowly die. And that’s why many services-based businesses don’t take off. They have customers or they’re getting leads. They’re just bad ones that suck up all their resources.
Because they took the easy road with their messaging and now they’re paying the price.
A note on brand voice and copy
Brand voice and copy are two related but separate topics I want to touch on quickly.
Contrary to what marketers and most copywriters think, brand voice is not subjective. It is highly objective and highly technical.
Much like music, it can be measured, and therefore consistently duplicated.
Tone of voice in writing made up of certain data points such as average sentence length, average comma usage, punctuation, and reading difficulty according to education levels – all of which are objective pieces of information.
An inconsistent brand voice (lack of consistency is the number one reason a brand voice is ineffective) can be attributed to not understanding the underlying principles of brand voice.
But even a writer who does understand these will have a hard time producing a consistent brand voice if there is no clearly defined POV.
Similarly, a copywriter who isn’t familiar with the technicalities of brand voice (i.e., most copywriters), will produce far more consistent messaging with their copy when there is a clearly defined POV.
When your POV is crystal clear, an inconsistent brand voice becomes much less of an issue.
When people say they like a company's marketing, they typically say they like their brand voice.
That’s false. They like that they have something to say. They like how they think about the world in relation to what they're selling and then how they turn around and express that.
In other words, they like their POV.
Yes, how you say something is just as important as what you say, but what you’re attracted to is that content. The delivery would mean nothing if it wasn’t backed up by substance (i.e., a compelling POV).
Rarely is “wrong” or “bad” brand voice the actual issue with a company’s marketing. The issue stems deeper.
A “fun, unique, friendly yet trustworthy” brand voice will not get a CFO to sign on the dotted line if you have not done the legwork of getting crystal clear on the value you provide.
Brand voice is something you don’t choose either. Brand voice is what’s dictated by your ideal customer or client and informed by your POV. (6)
Now, in a few instances your ICP might be a choice. As a services-based business, I could work with a variety of different companies but I choose to work with certain types of businesses and individuals.
(As a client-facing and services-based business, it’s not just about what makes you the most money. It’s also about working with people whose presence doesn't annoy you on a personal level.)
For product-based or software companies, one's ICP usually isn’t a choice. It’s what customer is going to make you the most money while costing you the least money to acquire and least time and effort to keep happy.
And if your ICP isn't a choice, what resonates with them is even less of one.
Different channels have also different objectives and different levels of intent for the audience.
My LinkedIn writing voice is a strategic decision dictated by what my ICP wants to hear. It just so happens to be somewhat in line with my personality. But that is a coincidence.
There is no way to broach the topics I do in a gentle way. The business and marketing issues I speak to are incredibly serious. Treating them in a friendly way (i.e., in a softer tone of voice) would diminish the impact of my content.
But more importantly, my tone of voice is not harsh to my target audience and ICP. It hits all the right notes for them. People outside of that find me “unnecessarily combative.”
My writing voice on other channels is completely different. Moreover, I could tell you exactly how it’s different as well, not just describe the “vibes.”
As for copy, this is dictated equally by brand voice and messaging. Which is why it’s so crucial to establish clear messaging restraints.
An absence of boundaries at the messaging level results in an inconsistent copy across channels. And when multiple touchpoints are required to make a purchase like in B2B, boundaries are crucial to copy that converts.
An example of the three components in action
I want to go over an example of how the three components – "the facts," POV, and messaging – come together.
I just finished positioning for Sirkin Research, a B2B research company.
I’m normally against building in public and prefer my clients to remain anonymous as mentioned, but this client was bold enough to let me use our work together as an example.
Here are screenshots from my actual working document of what it looks like so far using the approach outlined above:
From here, I’ll expand on the messaging constraints, establish the brand voice, and then I'll write the website copy.
The cowardice of category creation
Category creation, as it’s typically attempted by B2B companies, is a cowardly attempt to avoid differentiation woes.
“Let’s create a category because our product is so unique that no current category encapsulates it in all its glory.”
What this is actually code for:
“To be honest, we can’t articulate what we do. But we know if we tried, we’d belong in an existing, saturated category with some big players that we’re too scared to compete with.
And we don't know how to differentiate. Because we refuse to disqualify anyone from our target audience. Because we really don’t know our customers (we actually might not have any), so we’re going to try to get everyone to like us.”
Companies think that by creating a new category that they can avoid it entirely.
They think that being different by virtue of their existence is a good thing.
I’m here to tell you it’s not. Because not having competition is a fallacy.
Companies attempting to use category creation to avoid competing: your competition definitely exists. It’s called inaction and the status quo.
I’d rather be up against another company than those two any day.
There's a good chance people are doing just fine without your product or service, contrary to the story you've told yourself.
Which means you need to come up with a very compelling reason for people to get up from their very comfortable metaphorical status quo couch. A new category is not that reason.
In addition to it typically being the wrong solution, there are two key issues with how category creation is often attempted:
First, the above questions – or some iteration of them – lay the foundation for your marketing. These questions are not proprietary or special in any regard. They are literally the most basic questions you could ask anyone about their business.
So whether you answer them as I laid them out or in your own way doesn't matter. But attempting to dodge them by way of category creation means you’re building your marketing on quicksand.
The second issue with category creation, as it's typically attempted, is less obvious.
What people who are in favor of category creation outright don’t seem to understand (despite often loving books on psychology), is that categories are what allow your audience to make connections. They are a reference point for them.
By creating a new one, you are removing their footing. They have nothing to step onto to get to the next level (i.e., determining if your solution is relevant to them).
Then you go and diagnose this issue with brand awareness, when it’s really not. It’s a brand relevance problem. Because you removed the only opportunity they had to gain even a semblance of an understanding of what your company does and how your solution applies to them.
The opposite of unsupervised category creation not backed by feedback from one’s ICP is the “Uber of X” positioning.
This, like “pick an enemy positioning,” is also simpleminded indolence. It takes our brains’ reliance on reference points and drives it into the ground by relying on your audience to draw a connection in their mind instead of you doing the legwork of telling them what you do.
Category creation, like most recreational and many prescription drugs, is used to escape the harsh reality that life is hard and building a company makes it even harder.
But this marketing drug is unique.
First, it’s not just B2B marketers selling this one. (Don’t get me wrong, they definitely do. Typically, the same ones who push “pick an enemy” positioning talk the most about category creation; neither group knows how to establish a company in its own right.)
But the people who push the most for category creation are actually founders and CEOs.
Much like B2B marketers and their war against “boring marketing,” category creation is an easy enemy, luxury problem companies wish they had.
The second reason category creation is a unique marketing drug is that you can’t overdose on it.
Category creation attempts can absolutely kill an early-stage startup or prevent an established company from reaching its full potential.
But it’s not the category creation that does the actual harm. It’s all the basic marketing needs that get neglected in pursuit of a “new” category.
Unlike other marketing tactics that require spending money, overdosing on category creation is a slow, anxious death by distraction.
Companies, if your product does not fit into an existing category, rarely does that mean create a new one.
You most likely don't need a category, you need to figure out a clear way to tell your audience what you do. There’s a really good chance you already fit in an existing category, you just don’t know how to stand out within it.
Note how I didn’t say simple. It doesn’t need to be simple, especially if your product isn’t simple. It must be clear to the people who you want to hand you money. So unless that’s your grandma or your kindergartener, it matters not that they understand what your company does.
Simple doesn’t equate to clear – those are two different things. Some products are inherently complex and that must be respected.
Am I saying don’t create a category?
No. I’m saying don’t do it as an excuse to not answer hard questions. Category creation is a last resort that should be informed through quantitative and qualitative data from your ICP.
Every company that beelines to category creation without consulting their ICP ends up back at square one, if they survive.
Because they create a category that they love, their investors love, their mom loves – everyone but the people who matter, loves.
It’s not that their target audience hates their category; it’s worse than that. They simply don’t care.
How can they?
They created a category based on what they wanted, not what their ideal customer needed.
What “weak” positioning gets diagnosed with
A lack of POV leads to weak positioning. This then gets misdiagnoses with “lack of brand awareness.”
It’s a misdiagnosis because every brand awareness problem is actually a brand relevance problem, caused by ineffective positioning, caused by an absence of a compelling POV, caused by a refusal to disqualify.
Yes, brand awareness is a brand relevance issue even for unknown startups.
How?
Because relevance is what effective positioning gets you.
Differentiation isn’t enough. Customers don’t care if you’re different if you don’t communicate how you being different helps them solve a problem that they’re willing to pay money to solve.
For unknown startups, people could very well not know you exist (i.e., be aware of your company).
But both early-stage unknown startups or well-known mature companies who complain about brand awareness issues aren’t converting the people who are aware of them.
A company – new or established – that’s getting high quality leads that their sales team can easily convert would never say they had a brand awareness problem.
The company would know this is proof that their messaging is on point and they would invest in getting it in front of more people through paid media, demand gen content, etc.
But a company that’s not getting any bites from the few people who they do interact with will always play victim to “brand awareness,” as will well-known mature companies whose growth has stagnated. (7)
To pull from a previous piece in a section where I dissect the issues with “pick an enemy positioning”:
Many of you will win the brand awareness battle with your "pick an enemy" positioning. But you won’t realize you’ve been victorious.
You’ll then enter the brand relevance war. Except you’ll continue to blame stalled growth on people not knowing you exist.
People know you exist. They just don’t care.
You refuse to give them a reason to.
You refuse to do the uncomfortable work of getting clear on what you do, who you do it for, and who you don’t do it for. You continue to think your TAM for your niche software is everyone with a pulse over the age of 25.
You’ll have an “identity crisis.” Then you’ll reposition yourself with a stance and messaging that your CEO and investors love (fist pump).
Then you’ll go through this Sisyphean cycle again. Unlike Sisyphus, however, your company may very well die.
Because you got too tired fighting a battle you had already won because you wouldn't look the real enemy – or your audience – in the eye.
Companies who claim brand awareness is their issue are failing to let people know why their product is relevant to them. They have irrelevant messaging caused by the absence of a compelling POV caused by the refusal to disqualify.
Relevant messaging to the wrong audience can never happen. Messaging that falls on deaf ears is irrelevant.
Why a compelling POV is critical to effective positioning
When people talk about positioning, they’re usually talking about POV.
I’m not splitting hairs here; this distinction is important.
In addition to a refusal to disqualify, not understanding this subtlety is where most companies go wrong with their positioning.
“What is our point-of-view about X?” is something you must answer when asking “how do we position ourselves?”
Messaging is the expression of your positioning, which is dictated by your POV and informed by "the facts."
Your POV is what connects “the facts” to your messaging. It’s also what holds your brand and entire marketing strategy together.
POV impacts target audience and ICP – Questions 3 (who is our product/service a good fit for?) and 4 (who isn't our product/service a good fit for?) under "the facts." And POV is what you lean on if you can’t answer Question 5 (what do we do that our competition doesn’t or can’t?).
So while “the facts” are an important part of your positioning, and in turn, your overall marketing strategy, POV actually rules all.
I'll prove it.
Sirkin Research’s main POV – beginning with the end in mind – impacts their target audience and ICP. They will not work with companies who don’t have a content team in place or the budget or willingness to invest in writers and content strategists.
It also impacts their messaging. They will not be using the word research very much. Despite the name, Sirkin Research doesn’t actually sell research. Sirkin Research sells actionable insight extracted from product-specific quantitative data (what they call demand research).
And even if it did sell research, it's the vegetables of marketing. Everyone knows they should be doing it but they don’t want to or don’t know how to do it in a way that doesn’t reveal that they’re way off-base with their decisions.
So, their messaging focuses on the result of doing their style of research: content for the entire customer journey, positioning and targeted messaging, and knowing what matters most to a company’s ideal customer.
My fintech’s client POV – the idea that banks are partners, not punching bags – impacts their target audience and ICP.
Their business model is rev share with banks, which means they only make money if their customers are growing. Therefore, they don’t want flash in the pan startups who are burning through cash and don’t understand the importance of growing slowly but sustainably.
Their POV also impacts their messaging. They will not be “throwing rocks” at banks like most other corporate finance startups do.
My sound design client’s POV – that it doesn’t matter if your brand is audible if it’s not the right sound – impacts their target audience and ICP. They will not work with brands who are jumping on the sonic logo bandwagon out of FOMO, and just want something yesterday.
Their POV also impacts their messaging. As mentioned, I refused to use the phrase “cutting through the noise,” which signals that all sound is created equal. To quote their About page:
As more and more brands enter the acoustic realm, that means it’s not enough to simply be audible. To make the shift from noticed to remembered requires a deep understanding of how sound defines moments and contributes to a larger narrative.
Brands can only cut through the noise with the right sound, not any sound.
As you can see, it’s the POV that’s actually running the show.
A POV is the “spine” of a brand. Many B2B companies are spineless. They might have rogue campaigns that may be “good” but there’s no overarching theme with them that expresses a how they view the world in relation to their product or solution.
An absence of a clear POV leads to inconsistent messaging and an inconsistent brand voice, which leads to inconsistent copy, which leads to confusion by your audience, which leads to inaction.
Even if the campaign idea, messaging, or copy is “good.” Which actually isn’t possible. Because inconsistent is ineffective, and ineffective can never be good.
In the B2B world, consistent, clear, and “boring” messaging will beat the most brilliant advertising campaign any day.
A analogy demonstrating the importance of a POV with effective positioning
I’m going to demonstrate how a POV is the invisible force that holds effective positioning together using the analogy of concrete (not to be confused with cement, an ingredient in concrete, not a synonym for it).
One thing you must know about concrete is that it's brittle.
This might sound strange. When we think of concrete, we typically think of words like strong and permanent. And it is.
But concrete possesses compressive strength, not tensile strength.
The term brittle refers to the type of fracture it experiences when tensile stress gets introduced. In other words, it can withstand being pushed together, but not pulled apart. (The opposite of brittle is ductile, which is when a material stretches or deforms under stress.)
Here’s an illustration highlighting the differences between compression and tension.
In order for concrete to be a suitable material with which to build large structures that can also withstand incredibly heavy weight (e.g., skyscrapers, bridges, parking garages, etc.), it must be strengthened with other materials and techniques.
Here are three main types of concrete construction and how they compare to the critical role POV plays in effective positioning and an impactful brand:
1. Plain unreinforced concrete. This is used for pavements, walkways, and slab foundations used in many homes. As mentioned, concrete’s brittle fractures are a result of tensile failure. With these types of projects, the concrete does not undergo much tensile loading. However, if it does encounter tensile loading, it will fail – and suddenly.
Plain unreinforced concrete is the equivalent of “pick an enemy” positioning or leaning on features to differentiate yourself.
In other words, hack-y, one-dimensional positioning that can only withstand one type of pressure (compressive) pushed by marketers with no genuine skills so they focus on critiquing copy and complaining about how boring B2B marketing is.
Everything is fine until the enemy ceases to exist, you run out of copy ideas, or your competitor(s) comes out with the exact same (or better) feature as yours – there goes your entire positioning. Like plain concrete, everything’s fine until it’s not.
2. Reinforced concrete. Reinforced concrete construction uses steel reinforcing bars (a.k.a. “rebar”) to increase its tensile strength.
Because it’s reinforced with a ductile material (i.e., stretches or changes form versus breaking under stress), the structure can handle a higher tension load. As the tension load increases the steel rebar will stretch and deform. This may lead to cracks in the concrete but not a rapid and total failure of the structure.
Reinforced is the equivalent of a company that’s established “the facts” and its messaging, but without an overarching, compelling POV tying it all together.
Now, this would work for a bit, especially for a category creator.
However, despite being stronger than plain concrete, reinforced concrete isn’t foolproof. It takes enormous skill to implement properly and there are multiple factors that affect how long it lasts and how heavy of loads it can withstand.
One of the biggest issues with reinforced concrete is the steel bars. When reinforced concrete fails, it’s because the steel bars have failed. Steel contains iron, and iron rusts.
When iron reacts with water, it creates hydrated iron oxide (i.e., rust). Changes in temperature speed up the oxidation process and corrode the steel even faster.
Just like you can’t control environmental factors impacting the steel in reinforced concrete, you can’t control whether or not a competitor pops up and does the exact same thing as you (“the facts”), nor can you control future copywriters from producing inconsistent messaging in your marketing collateral.
You can only do your best to prevent that by insulating the steel with at least 50-100mm of concrete, or establishing a compelling POV that differentiates you and gives your messaging direction and supervision.
Just like reinforced concrete will eventually fail if the steel bars are exposed to enough moisture (i.e., environmental factors outside of engineers’ control), slowly, but surely, without a POV holding it together, your positioning will fail too.
The failure rate is slower than “pick an enemy” positioning, and there will be signs, such as a decrease in lead quality and decrease in conversions.
But make no mistake, there will still be failure by way of inconsistent messaging and copy because it’s not held together by a POV.
3. Pre-stressed reinforced concrete. This type of concrete construction is the strongest type of concrete construction. Like reinforced concrete, it also uses concrete and steel reinforcing bars. However, there’s a third invisible element at play – pre-stressing.
Equivalent to a compelling POV, pre-stressing is the invisible tension that strengthens the concrete structure, allowing one plus one to equal three. Without this pre-stressing, it would just be reinforced concrete (i.e., “the facts” + messaging).
By pre-emptively stressing the steel bars, which possess tensile strength, it offsets future tensile stress.
Meaning, it beats tensile stress to the punch. A compelling POV beats your competitor(s) to the punch as well.
“You can’t break us, we already broke ourselves,” that’s what a compelling POV does.
“We know who we are, we know who we’re for, we know who we’re not for, and we know that how we view the world in relation to the problem we solve is different than any other company out there – you can't touch us.”
That's what a compelling POV gets you when it comes to your positioning.
Only poorly created concrete foundations must be ripped up. A compelling POV is what will prevent you from having to “reposition,” or rip out your concrete foundation.
If you’ve thought through your POV, even if you completely change your product, your ICP, or your copy, so long as you approach your new product, ICP or copy with the same philosophy, aka your POV, you won’t have to play catch up.
A few warnings
In my experience, there is an inverse relationship between how many positioning and messaging "tips" someone gives and how much positioning and messaging they’ve actually been responsible for creating. The same goes for copywriting tips and marketing advice.
Within this group, I’ve identified six subgroups, many of which overlap, along with reasons you should be wary of them:
Subgroup 1. Those that are under the delusion that you choose your positioning. You don’t. As I explained above, effective positioning must be a perfect fit between three things.
Subgroup 2. Those that specialize in positioning for pre-revenue early-stage startups. They encourage endless repositioning based on feedback.
Now, regular feedback loops are crucial for all aspects of business, not just marketing. But repositioning all the time based on feedback doesn’t mean you’re nimble and quick to adapt. It means your research is trash.
Likewise, pre-revenue means no customers yet. Feedback from beta testers is not the same as customer feedback.
Just because someone will play with your software for free and thinks it’s “cool,” doesn’t mean they’ll actually pay money for it.
Moreover, beta tests typically test features in isolation, not the entire product experience. How could using siloed data from cross-sections of the product to make business-wide decisions possibly end well?
As for market research, this is rarely done at the product-level. Category-level research does not provide actionable insight. It’s dust generating fodder to satisfy C-suites.
Lastly, anyone who thinks starting a company and taking on millions in funding without a proven path to profitability, or at least proof of repeatable revenue sources, should be avoided at all costs.
Just because this is common doesn’t mean it’s normal.
Subgroup 3. Those that have never written copy outside of their own social media posts, poorly formatted newsletters, and egregious website copy for their own companies.
Look, I get it. Why get your hands dirty with it when you can just film copy teardowns to position yourself as a messaging expert?
But people think that just because they can read and write, their opinion on messaging and copy matters. It doesn’t. (8)
The majority of those who frequently critique positioning, messaging, or copy on social media aren’t actually responsible for doing any of these things.
Notice how they always use examples of other brands or other companies in their posts. They can’t use their own work; it doesn’t exist.
Giving copywriting advice and critiquing copy in a LinkedIn post is far easier than having to do battle with the blank page on someone else’s behalf.
However, B2B marketers feeling far too comfortable giving advice about a job that would make them crumble faster than a shortbread cookie from a hipster bakery in Central Phoenix if they ever had to actually do it isn’t the issue though.
After all, B2B marketing is far from the only industry where the most influential people are also the most talentless.
The issue is that copy is how you translate your positioning to your ICP and target audience.
And because these people don’t actually write copy for anyone but themselves, they don’t know how to communicate effectively to people that do.
Sure, a skilled copywriter can work with lofty attempts at positioning and messaging, no doubt wrought with words and phrases like “punchy,” “no BS,” “no fluff,” “Economist style,” “smart yet friendly,” “authoritative yet casual”).
But skilled copywriters are few and far between.
The majority of copywriters these days, particularly in B2B, were raised by Internet courses that give them templates and teach them cute little copywriting tips, not how to think for themselves.
You can tell by the way they’re enamored with ChatGPT. They genuinely think it’s somehow going to refine their craft when it’s just going to be their downfall. ChatGPT is to writers what category creation is to startups – a slow, anxious death by distraction.
They’ve also been brainwashed by anti-boring propaganda. Which means they can’t help but write copy that sounds like your target audience is an eighteen-year-old on their first day of new student orientation, not grown adults looking to make a software purchase that doesn’t get them fired.
So unless you know how to translate your messaging into information that can then be acted upon, your precious new positioning and messaging that you are so excited about will either never come to be, or it will sound like every other B2B company that’s come about or rebranded since 2018.
Case in point from a B2B marketer with a large following:
My response – with which she conceded and agreed?
Positioning or messaging that isn't actionable is just a pretty, expensive PDF. What are you paying for if your marketing team or copywriters can't use it?
The issue you speak to isn't the lack of additional deliverables, it's the original deliverable.
Companies: the above issue is on you – not the contractor or agency – for buying something created by someone who has never been in the trenches as a writer. (9)
Be wary of hiring an architect just because they're famous, only to learn the hard way that they create blueprints that your general contractors can’t use.
Subgroup 4. Those with large audiences who are the marketing equivalent of an SDR who crushed quota at Zoom in Q2 of 2020.
These are right place, right time one-hit wonders that spew lukewarm tap water common sense that most of you lap up like it’s ice cold Evian insight because you spend too much time behind a laptop reading about marketing and not enough time out in the world actually doing it.
Subgroup 5. Those that overload their audience with convoluted posts disguised as sophisticated marketing talk.
They wax poetic about seemingly philosophical marketing issues that really don’t matter, such as “what does it mean to build a media company?” Meanwhile, few companies in B2B can actually build a regular one.
Subgroup 6. Those who talk about positioning and messaging who have driven meaningful growth.
There’s only one problem: they’ve only ever done so when the Fed is feeling generous. (If the CMO I discussed in the introduction posted on LinkedIn, he would fall into this category.)
It’s a whole new world for you SaaS people. What you’re calling “doing more with less” is just baby tech talk for “learning to run a real business.”
As I’ve stated before in the disclaimer section of this piece, the issue is not any of the six subgroups above, nor any marketer on the Internet for that matter.
The issue is that you’re listening to them, when they have no idea what your company does or who your customers are.
How would they? They’re speaking to thousands of people every time they post or go on a podcast.
And guess what? I don’t know what your company does or who your target audience is either.
Which is why, instead, I’m equipping you with questions to ask instead of promising you answers.
Final takeaways
Figuring out positioning is simple, but not easy. Do not confuse these two things.
It’s more of a puzzle than a process. Organized chaos, if you will.
Establishing and implementing effective positioning also takes time. Because audience and customer research takes time. It also takes time to gain a consensus with product and sales and then get everyone on the same page once it is established.
These are all prerequisites for effective positioning within an organization.
I know many of you are thinking this all sounds too difficult. You’re used to lazy content on LinkedIn. You’re used to StoryBrand positioning.
B2B customers don’t need a hero – even if it's themselves.
On the enterprise side, they need a solution that won’t get them fired. On the SMB side, they need something that makes them hate their life just a little bit less.
Both groups need something that either grows their bottom line or simply protects it.
They need a company that’s willing to look them in the eye, tell them what they do, how they do it, and for how much – in their language, not some made up one because B2B marketers can’t come to grips with the fact that they sell software to software companies.
And if you can’t do that, then you need to get out of their face.
Is the approach above completely foolproof? No, there is no such thing.
But answering all of the questions outlined above – or at least some form of them – will get you as close to foolproof positioning as possible.
The byproduct of answering them is the ability to answer the question: why should customers choose us?
And at the end of the day, that’s the whole point of positioning.
Because if you don’t know why customers hand your company money instead of someone else, or instead of keeping it in their wallet – how do you expect to get more of them?
Footnotes
(1)
B2B’s arrogance will kill more companies than any recession ever will.
It’s what caused these layoffs. Not pressure from VCs, not laughable valuations, not climbing interest rates – pride. Tech companies thought their dumb, COVID luck would last forever.
The truth is, recessions don’t actually kill companies. Companies die in them. Those are two different things.
If recessions did kill companies, luxury wouldn’t have outlasted and even grown during every previous one.
As for software companies that don’t make it, there are two reasons.
They shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Or they didn’t communicate their value clearly to the right people, because they didn’t know their target audience, because all they had to do to get funding was present a slide showcasing their TAM as anyone with a laptop. In short, they refused to disqualify.
(2)
You do not choose who this group is, nor do you choose what resonates with them. This group (or groups) is dictated by who is willing to pay money for your solution, who will cost you the least to acquire, cost you the least to keep happy, or pay you the most money, ideally all three.
(3)
Few people who seek them out have nailed the positioning foundation required for a strategic narrative or brand story that attracts net new customers and drives meaningful revenue. Because people who have nailed their positioning know their customers. And companies who know their customers don’t listen to B2B marketers on the Internet.
(4)
I help them answer “the facts” in a way that proves useful, but outside of questions 3 and 4 (who is/isn’t your solution a good fit for), which sometimes gets impacted by the POV I develop, those questions are their responsibility.
(5)
There is no such thing as too expensive for a business owner when it comes to certain problems. Many tech companies are simply too focused on solving ones that don’t actually matter to their alleged target audience.
When a business owner or decision maker says something is out of their budget, what they’re really saying is “your solution does not provide enough value to warrant paying you what you’re suggesting for it.” The price is never too high, the value it brings is merely too low.
If you are still getting objections despite being the best priced product on the market, it’s because your solution doesn’t actually solve problems well enough.
(6)
Brand voice is dictated primarily by POV and secondarily by “the facts.” Who you’re speaking to (question 3 under “the facts”) impacts how you speak to them.
Messaging is dictated by POV and informed by brand voice. It is possible to establish a significant portion of your messaging (i.e., answer the questions above under messaging) prior to fully establishing your brand voice despite it being a key component of effective positioning.
(7)
Companies will get in front of 100 people within their ICP and only three will show interest. They’ll consider it a fluke and gun for getting their message in front of 100 more people, thinking that increasing the sample size will increase conversion rate.
But if companies are only converting (into leads or customers) a low percentage of their ICP that is already seeing their message, it means that the positioning isn't aligned to the needs of their ICP. Exposing it to more people may increase conversions, but it won't improve the conversion rate.
(8)
The difference between B2B marketing influencers and creative directors (CDs) at ad agencies who may also have an audience (and who many B2B marketers wish they could be like but never will because they don’t have the talent nor the guts to leave their cushy tech salary), is that nearly every CD was previously a copywriter.
(9)
Web copy or a sales deck are also two completely separate deliverables that cost significantly more time, money, and effort than a positioning and messaging project. They are not something that just gets shimmied into one.
*This is a Justin Blackman and Abby Woodcock term.
Appendix
What’s a brand play?
A brand play is when you lean more heavily on your POV or messaging (both defined below) to establish differentiation.
You still must establish “the facts,” (i.e., what you’re doing here), as the answers to those questions will inform your messaging.
But if you’re in a saturated market and stuck in a feature war, then you need to lean on your POV, not your positioning. You can’t win solely on “the facts.” You all do the same thing.
Interestingly enough, many companies who could afford to not have a brand play because they were either first to market or have market share by way of a superior product still focus enormously on brand, specifically, POV.
How you view the world in relation to your solution and how you express that to your ICP and customers becomes how you differentiate, not so much the product itself.
Many companies trying (and failing) to do that through a “fun brand voice.”All SaaS companies that were founded or rebranded after 2019 all sound the exact same because they don’t get that brand voice is actually objective and has technicalities to it.
What’s important to your customers that your competitors aren’t doing or that your company does better?
For B2B companies, the answer typically lies in the realm of content and customer experience.
But first, how easy do you make it to buy?
Don’t even think about worrying about a brand play, or even demand gen, until you fix your demand capture. Many of you are worrying about building a brand or generating net new demand when you can’t even catch what demand you do have.
Secondly, how is your customer experience? Is there a seamless onboarding process, or are they shuffled around with no clear point of contact? Many companies send pointless, unhelpful emails about their product or, even worse, don't communicate at all with their customers until their renewal is due.
That’s all part of your brand. So before you worry about building a new one, worry about cleaning up your existing brand.
If those are taken care of, a B2B brand play is best achieved by discussing things and breaking down issues that every other company thinks is too “boring” or that they’re too good for.
There are many topics that marketers consider too mundane to touch on because they’re too close to them. But getting granular on topics that relate to your solution is how you establish trust.
“If they went through all the effort to break down that complex topic for free for their audience, imagine how generous they must be with their paying customers.” That’s the reaction – either conscious or subconscious – that high quality, specific, and granular content produces in potential buyers.
How I got into positioning
Not long ago, I was simply trying to mind my own business as a copywriter who specialized in brand voice.
Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and just excited by an inbound lead as a burnt out photographer turned copywriter starting their career over from scratch while her peers were getting promoted to VPs, I said yes to a B2B marketing agency whose client was an established B2B payment processing company who I was told needed new website copy.
As a self-taught copywriter, I was excited to work with an agency and learn from what I was hoping to be creative yet discerning, business-savvy marketing professionals.
I was also excited to work with a mature company as a client. Surely, a company over a decade old with tens of millions in revenue would have their positioning down pat. And surely, this agency would provide the raw materials needed to build their website copy given what they were paying me.
I was wrong about both.
I received two sets of information from the agency.
The first I received immediately: a deck with the agency’s branding filled with logos of companies like Apple, North Face, and Airbnb that the client aspired to be, and a note passed on from the client they “hated their current website copy and wanted something with more personality.” That’s all.
The second I had to fight tooth and nail to get: unhelpful answers to questions like who their target audience was, how their product worked, and what they did that their competitors didn’t.
Neither were what I needed to assemble the website copy.
Because they actually didn’t just need website copy. And they didn’t just need positioning.
As a company in a highly saturated market where everyone does pretty much the same thing, what they actually needed was a POV.
Fortunately, I was able to give that to them. I had written website copy before, for smaller clients, but website copy nonetheless. I took them through the positioning approach that I outline below. Not to be nice, but because I needed that information to do my job.
So the truth is, I was always in positioning.
And copywriters, if you write website copy, there’s a good chance you are too.
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